User:WaitingForConnection/Wikidata case study

I'm not sure what direction the Wikidata development is taking, and it is likely that the applications below will not be technically possible for quite some time. Some of it may never be supported. Nonetheless, here is an outline of functionality that I hope Wikidata will feature in a few years' time.

The base article that I am considering is en:List of top-division football clubs in UEFA countries, but most of the potential uses of Wikidata will have a place elsewhere on the English Wikipedia and beyond, which I explore where applicable. For simplicity, you may wish to only look at one section of the above list – I would recommend Albania.

Using the interwiki functionality to keep names up to date

As you can see at the top of the Albania section, the list makes use of the country name, name of the association, and the league name. It would be fantastic if, through use of Wikidata, human intervention was not required to ensure that these names were up to date.

This functionality could also be of use in related navboxes, such as en:Template:UEFA associations. The ability to keep country names up to date would probably be useful more widely.

Utilising a set of data

The UEFA country coefficients change every year. They are of relevance to the list we are considering, and to the article mentioned in the previous sentence. Additionally, if we could be confident of the data being updated in a timely fashion (currently we are not, because the work has to be done manually), we would also use this data in the infoboxes of individual leagues, such as en:Albanian Superliga. Wikidata strikes me as the most efficient means of achieving this.

Updating the tables themselves

This is probably a long way off. But if relationships between data were supported, it might be possible, through use of Wikidata, to completely update a table with minimal human intervention. A dataset for 2011–12 Albanian Superliga could contain a list of clubs that competed in the league that season. Each individual club's data would contain the city in which they play. The previous season's champion would need to be updated manually, as would maintenance of the sort function, but this relatively small level of human intervention would be desirable, as the human should be in a position to ensure that things are working properly.

This functionality could also be useful in related navboxes, such as en:Template:2011–12 in Albanian football

Using the above functionality to the benefit of other languages

There are several other language versions of Wikipedia which might wish to create an equivalent list based on the work thus far: the French, German and Italian ones in particular. I presume that the reason the aforementioned projects don't have an equivalent list is because of the collossal level of maintenance currently needed to maintain the English and Spanish lists.

It goes without saying that many other Wikipedia would wish to make use of some or all of the features above, both in the context of this specific example, and more generally for applications unrelated to football.